Secular Islam Summit:
Islam‚™s Rebel Women Make Their Mark

A lot has
already been written about the recently held Secular
Islam Summit at St. Petersburg (Florida), yet I did not want
to miss out on writing a few words about the exciting experience
of this unprecedented event. I was thrilled to meet up with the
prominent writers and activists, namely Ibn Warraq, Tashbih
Sayyed, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish et al.

As the summit
started, my first encounter was with Wall Street
Journal‚™s Bret Stephens who sat next to me. While
chatting with him, I mentioned of islam-watch.org,
faithfreedom.org and
other websites which publish my essays. I requested him to make
review of this significant and rising ‚cyber
movement‚ by the secular and ex-Muslims to counter
the rise of radical Islam.

Although the
summit was supposed to mean for a call to secularization of
Islam, fewer of the speakers, namely Irshad Manji, Tashbih
Sayyed, Shaker al-Nabusi and Hasan Mahmud et al.,
presented a reformist secular perspective, while a dominant
majority were of the view that Islam is hard to reform. Ahmed
Bedier, the head of Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR) of
the area, who dropped by the summit and denounced the event as
irrelevant to Islam recognizing the participants either as
apostates or non-practicing Muslims, who did not represent the
voice of the Muslim community. Given the dominantly critical
views being expressed at the summit, Mr. Bedier could not be more
accurate than this, although Tashbih Sayyed, who calls himself a
Muslim, angrily trashed Mr. Bedier‚™s comment. He
claimed that it is not Mr. Bedier or CAIR, who represent the
Muslim community in the USA but he and his likes of the summit
represented the Muslims in America. I, however, was left to
wonder how many of American Muslims would respond to Mr. Tashbih
Sayyed‚™s call and how many to CAIR‚™s.
In agreement with Mr. Bedier‚™s comment, I was also
left to wonder how many of those allegedly secular Muslims
practice regular Islamic prayers and fasting. In fact, one
prominent speaker from the secular-reformist camp confided with
me that he was personally a straight-forward atheist.

Although the
famed Ibn Warraq was at his intellectual best, it was a band of
courageous women, whose brave and loud voices stole much of
attention in the summit. The brave and firebrand Wafa Sultan was
almost at her usual self, who, while accepting an award for
courage, found the vindication of her dangerous and selfless
mission by recounting the comments of two readers from the Middle
East. One female supporter, who has compiled her essays into a
book, wrote ‚it is the Koran for her‚,
while another supporter has found a ‚true
prophet‚ in Wafa Sultan. In her plenary lecture on
the issue of ‚oppression of women in the Islamic
world‚™, she concluded that even if a single woman
became freed from the tyranny of Islam as a result of her
mission, she would consider her mission a success amid roaring
applause. In answer to a question about the compatibility of
Islam to secular Western society, she bluntly replied that it
would possible only if ‚everything of Islam was
changed keeping the name‚™. She was also candid in
CNN‚™s Glenn Beck interview about the true nature of
Islam: ‚I don‚™t see any difference
between radical Islam and regular Islam. Because Islam is not
only a religion. Islam is a religion and is a political ideology
deeply rooted in its teaching.‚ Nonie Darwish, the
other brave rebel women of Islam, was equally brilliant in her
presentations. In response to a question, both Wafa Sultan and
Nonie Darwish emphasized that a person cannot be a good Muslim
and an American at the same time.

Amidst the
great spectacle at the summit, another firebrand female rebel,
Ayan Hirsi Ali, was conspicuously missing who could attend as she
was on a nation-wide tour to promote her latest book,
‚Infidel‚™. Her endorsement
of the summit declaration,
however, made up somewhat for her absence.

As I left the
summit, I was left to wonder the great mark these rebel women of
Islam have been making in the world-wide movement against the
Islamic orthodoxy and radicalism. Anwar Shaikh, Salman Rushdie,
Taslima Nasrin and Ibn Warraq have been the familiar names for
some time. There is no doubt that Salman Rushdie‚™s
much controversial fiction, The Satanic Verses, opened the
flood-gate of a movement for critical investigation of the
theological core of Islam. Taslima Nasrin and Ibn Warraq have,
subsequently, walked into the footsteps of Rushdie although in
their own style. The fateful day of 9/11 created another spur
among the hesitant rebels of Islam to jump into the noble cause
of confronting the fast-rising intolerant orthodoxy of Islam,
which has ravaged the Islamic world and was now poised to engulf
the West, too.

Seventeen years
after the Rushdie affair of 1989, we witness an array of critics
of Islam from the Muslim background making their mark. The
Secular Islam Summit was a bold statement of this solidifying
movement, which can only move forward from here on. This summit
was also a demonstration of how a few women of extraordinary
courage taking the lead role in this movement. Alongside the
majority of toned-down male speakers at the summit, it is the
women like Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi
spoke in forceful voices and defiant body-language. It is the
Muslim women who have suffered and continue to suffer most from
the cruelty of Islam, which was even affirmed by the favorite
wife (Aisha) of prophet Muhammad: ‚‚¶Aisha
said, "I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the
believing women‚¶‚(Bukhari
7:72:715). Aisha had realized this conspicuous truth right at the
birth of Islam but accepted it as a privilege. It appears that a
band of women are waking up to this realization again today, who
are not willing to tolerate the degradation, injustice, cruelty
and barbarism of Islam on them and on their fellow women folks.
Their brave, loud and forceful voice and defiant body-language
spoke volume about how impatiently they to wait to see the end of
the tyranny of Islam.

Ibn Warraq,
who thinks reformation of Islam is irrelevant, wrote:
‚What we need now is an age of enlightenment in
the Islamic world. Without critical examination of Islam, it will
remain dogmatic, fanatical and intolerant and will continue to
stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and
truth.‚ Ibn Warraq is correct in that a divine
truth which stands true for eternity does not require
reformation, which is a term in contradiction. What is needed is
the realization among the Muslims that there are also truths
outside the bounds of Islam. Evidences for such a realization or
enlightenment are way too many in our world of today, which is
nourished so overwhelmingly by science, reason and rationalism
rooted outside the bounds of the theology of Islam. But Muslims,
despite their increasing level of education and prosperity in
recent decades, defy these overwhelming evidences and continue to
slide towards radical orthodoxy for establishing the sole truth,
which they consider lie in Islam, on the world stage.

Movement for
an Islamic enlightenment is nothing new. It started very early in
Islam during the Umayyad rule (661-750 CE), which was carried
forward by the pseudo-Islamic Mutazilites and the subsequent
freethinking philosophers during the Abbasid caliphate (751-1250
CE). Given these failed examples, which were often patronized by
the unquestioned rulers of the time, there is a need for a much
bolder, probably a fierce, movement to effect a successful and
lasting enlightenment, if at all it happens. The way Muslims
continue to defy the compelling reasons for an enlightenment, a
passive diffusion of it is unlikely to occur ‚ not
in decades, probably not even in centuries. All indications
suggest that orthodoxy and fanaticism among Muslims are only
likely to deepen in the coming decades.

With the
Islamic world, already lost to the darkness of fanatic orthodoxy
of Islam, there is an urgent need to effect an immediate
enlightenment to save the West, where a significant and
fast-growing community of increasingly fanatic Muslims have found
their home. There is a need to effect a revolutionary change in
the attitudes of the Muslims in two to three decades to save the
West. When I pressed Ibn Warraq at the summit about his views on
the future impact of Islam in the Western world, he reluctantly
termed it ‚depressing‚, especially in
Europe.

If such a
change in the attitudes of the Muslims in such a short time is at
all to happen, probably those loud, scathing and defiant voices
at the summit coming mainly from the female speakers, would play
a pioneering role. Those who hope that a passive diffusion of
enlightenment would trickle into the Muslim populace, have little
idea about the history of Islam; neither do they take note of the
fast-rising radicalism among the Muslims, including in the West.
What is needed is proactive forcing of an enlightenment down the
throats of the Muslims in double-quick time. Our hope lies in
those brave and defiant rebel women of Islam more, if not mostly.
So far, the rebel men of Islam are only playing the second
fiddle.[Hit Counter]